Hassan's fury is evident on the court, the way his face contorts with emotion, the way he muscles past larger opponents to the basket.

He is on a mission, a special mission.

"I've really started to use my mother as spiritual motivation for me," he said. "I've dedicated the season to her."

'It just happened'

By his mother, Hassan means his adoptive mother, Joyce.

He didn't meet his birth mother, Mary Graham, until he was a teen-ager, and maintains minimal contact with her now.

Joyce Booker always looked out for her younger sister, David Duke Booker said. And Mary Graham, he added, had an "ongoing" substance-abuse problem.

Graham moved in with the Bookers after they were married in 1972. She already had given birth to her first son. And when he was 2, she was institutionalized.

The boy stayed with the Bookers.

"There was no question about it," David said. "Who is so hardened that they wouldn't become attached to a young child living in their home? It just happened."

Hassan and Mataji entered the family even sooner -- "essentially at birth," David said. He still remembers getting the calls from the hospitals, bringing each of them home.

The Bookers completed the formal adoption of the three oldest children in 1979, when Hassan was 4. Jameelah later joined the family in much the same way.

"To know the whole story, you would have to have known my late wife," David says. "This woman, she was a saint on this earth."

Magnet for kids

The house was always buzzing, and not just with the Booker children. Kids from all over the neighborhood flocked to the Bookers'. Some stayed months, even years.

Even now, with only Jameelah home, visitors are frequent.

"There are thousands of children in big cities that need someone, either temporarily or permanently," David said.

"My late wife was the kind of person that people with problems just kind of gravitated to. She was more than a match for anybody's needs or problems."

And David, 45, a member of the California State Highway Patrol, was her husband.

He was 22 when he and Joyce began caring for young David. But one by one, he embraced his wife's nieces and nephews.

"To take on four kids and ask your partner to do that, that's a lot to ask," Mataji says. "But my father was willing. Even though my father wanted his own family, this is what my mother wanted. He didn't even think twice. He loved my mother. This was her blood."

And David, one of the few whites in the neighborhood, welcomed others' children, as well.

"Our door was always wide-open," Mataji said. "Most of the kids had parents who didn't give a rat's butt. He was like a father to the whole neighborhood.

"He would discipline them. He would whip them right along with us. They wouldn't complain and whine and go home. They knew they deserved it. They knew they were getting love.

"To this day, I know people who say they appreciated that."

But when it came to disciplining his own children, Joyce often served as mediator, Mataji said. Hassan, too, recalled his mother's compassion, how she would give money to beggars on the street.